Thanks to an assist from Trey Gowdy, DOJ will release Fast and Furious docs blocked by Obama and Holder

After years of legal proceedings and blocks by former President Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder, documents related to Operation Fast and Furious are finally being released.

The Justice Department announced it would be handing over the documents to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform which had previously been unable to secure them due to Obama and Holder’s refusal, The Daily Caller reported.

(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

“The Department of Justice under my watch is committed to transparency and the rule of law,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Wednesday in a statement. “This settlement agreement is an important step to make sure that the public finally receives all the facts related to Operation Fast and Furious.”

The document release, the Department said, is part of “the conditional settlement agreement, filed in federal court in Washington D.C.” and “would end six years of litigation arising out of the previous administration’s refusal to produce documents requested by the Committee.”

Holder, who headed the Obama Justice Department from 2009 to 2015, was the only cabinet member in U.S. history to be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to release the documents to the House Oversight Committee just hours after Obama invoked executive privilege to prevent their release.

Fast and Furious was a secret operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives which allowed weapons from the U.S. to pass into the hands of Mexican cartels. ATF lost track of nearly 2,000 firearms during the course of the operation which began in late 2009.

The operation ended in 2010 and details have been covered up for years as to what transpired, including the discovery of missing guns at the scene of the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

The Oversight Committee “seeks all relevant facts so we can learn from the mistakes made by the Justice Department,” Amanda Gonzalez, communications director for Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy, told The Daily Caller.

“We have a responsibility to uncover why they worked so hard to hide this information from the Committee, the family of Brian Terry, and the American people,” she said.

Kent Terry, brother of the slain Border Patrol agent, urged President Trump in a tweet last week to re-open the investigation into the gun scandal.

#FastAndFurious@realDonaldTrump Sir it’s been 7 yrs .my family ask you reopen Obama’s gun scandal that cost my brother his life..I talk to you back on the campaign trail here in Michigan and you offered to reopen the books into this senseless scandal .thank you.God bless

“We need to find out the truth, exactly what happened, how it happened, why it happened,” Kent Terry said. “We need Mr. Trump, President Trump, to unseal the documents, reverse executive privilege so that we know what happened, and that we can hold the people accountable that are responsible.”